Dave knocked three times on Kurt and Blaine's apartment door, then stood back and waited, shifting from foot to foot. He'd gone to the store after work and picked up a bottle of sweet red wine before taking the subway over. He clutched the bottle, still wrapped in its brown paper bag, in his right hand. He was honestly a little nervous about dinner, not knowing what kind of mood Kurt would be in after learning of Blaine's plan to include Dave in an intimate part of their lives.

Blaine pulled open the apartment door, a large smile lighting up his face. "Hey, Dave. Thanks for coming over! Come on in!"

As Dave stepped into the brightly lit apartment, Blaine pulled him into a hug, rising up onto his toes to whisper into Dave's ear. "I haven't told Kurt yet."

He pushed Blaine back. "What?"

Blaine grinned sheepishly. "I was too nervous. I need help."

"Blaine! That was the one thing I asked you to do before I got involved. I think I should go. You two aren't ready," Dave hissed.

"Honey, it's Dave!" Blaine called over his shoulder.

"Hi, Dave!" came Kurt's response, slightly muffled, from the direction of the kitchen.

Dave glared at Blaine. "I'm very disappointed in you."

"This is better," Blaine assured him, leading him toward the kitchen. "Kurt will be more accepting if we tell him together." He took the bottle of wine from Dave as they entered the kitchen. Sliding it out of the bag, he quickly glanced at the label. "This looks good, Dave," he complimented as he set it in the middle of the table. "Thanks for the wine."

"Hi, Dave," Kurt greeted again as he wiped his hands on a towel before approaching to give Dave a one armed hug. "Thanks for coming over tonight. Blaine said you wanted to talk to us about something, and I'm so curious about what you have to say, coming out of the blue!" Kurt returned his attention to whatever was cooking on the stove, so he missed the dark glare that Dave gave Blaine.

"Yes, it will be an interesting conversation," he managed to bite out. "But-"

"But he'd really rather save it for after dinner," Blaine cut in. "Wouldn't you, Dave?" He fixed him with a meaningful look, begging.

"Uh, yeah. That's right," Dave fumbled, unsure why he was giving in to dishonest Blaine. "I'd like to just catch up first; it's been so long since I've seen the two of you."

"It has been a while, hasn't it?" Kurt replied, back still toward the other two. "Something like three years I think." He made eye contact with Dave as he turned toward a cabinet that Dave was standing near. "How did you end up in New York?" he asked, moving toward him.

"Well," Dave began, rubbing at the back of his neck. He wasn't very comfortable with small talk when his brain wanted to focus on the problem at hand. "I'm working for the Giants as a sporting agent. I work on setting up PR opportunities for them, schedule interviews, things like that." He watched as Blaine leaned against the counter, resting his head against a cabinet and closing his eyes. He didn't move as Dave spoke, and he began to wonder if maybe Blaine was feeling more nervous than he'd realized.

"The Giants?" Kurt asked from the stove, breaking his train of thought.

"New York's NFL team?" Dave replied, incredulous.

"Oh!" Kurt chuckled. "I don't follow sports. That's more of a Blaine thing."

Dave laughed at that. "Well, I guess that hasn't changed from high school." He paused, then continued, "I landed the job almost right out of college thanks to a buddy of mine, and I've been living in a small apartment no too far from the subway."

"That's nice," Kurt mused as he began putting steaming dishes on the table.

There was an awkward minute of silence where no one knew quite what to say. Dave stood nervously near the small dining table, trying to catch Blaine's eye. He watched as the other man pinched the bridge of his nose and rolled his shoulders. Kurt continued busing dishes to the table, oblivious to the silent conversation Dave was trying to have with Blaine.

It was Kurt who broke the silence. "Dinner is served," he said proudly, gesturing to the table loaded with steaming bowls of food.

That announcement got Blaine moving. "Everything smells great, Kurt!" he exclaimed, pushing himself away from the counter and toward the table. "You can sit there, Dave," he told the man, gesturing to a chair across from the one he was pulling out for himself.

Dave seated himself and waited patiently as Blaine poured them each a glass of wine, and Kurt served the food. He managed to somehow make it through the meal, engaging in small talk as best he could. His mind was racing, however, trying to come up with a way to make the conversation they were about to have go smoothly. Eventually, he settled on the truth.

So, when all the dinner dishes had been put away and all three of them were seated in the Anderson-Hummel living room with cups of coffee, Dave was feeling fairly relaxed. He sipped at his drink, only half listening as Kurt and Blaine joked about a moment they'd had at the Lima Bean some years back. He silently wondered at Kurt and Blaine's ability to hide any problems they were having so well. The way they were joking and smiling at one another, everyone would think they were content together.

"So, Dave," Kurt interrupted him and his thoughts, "what did you want to talk to us about?"

Dave cleared his throat, a bit of nervousness creeping back in. "Well," he said, "Blaine called me last night."

Kurt swiveled in his seat, looking from Dave to Blaine and back to Dave. His eyes were wide, confused. "He did? You did?" he questioned them.

Blaine nodded.

"And why didn't you tell me?"

Blaine shrugged.

"What did you call him about?"

When Blaine didn't answer, Dave took pity on him. "He called to ask for my help." He paused, hoping Blaine would be ready to jump in, but when he looked at the expression on the younger man's face, all he could see was apprehension. Dave really wanted to scoop Blaine up and tell him everything was going to be okay, but he didn't really know if it would be yet. So, he forged ahead under Kurt's critical eye. "Blaine shared with me that the two of you have been under a lot of stress lately, with finals and jobs and such, and he said that it was causing the two of you to fight. He told me that you're having a difficult time finding a chance to relax, and he wanted to know if I could help."

"How could you help?" Kurt bit out, clearly upset by Dave's little speech.

"When Blaine and I were dating," he winced as Kurt cringed at the memory, "we used to..." he trailed off. He was unsure how to describe it without making it sound immediately appalling.

Luckily for Dave, Blaine saved him. "Age play," he muttered.

"I'm sorry?" Kurt replied, turning his piercing gaze on his husband.

"We would age play," Blaine repeated, voice stronger. "Not in a sexual way; it was a way to help me relax and work through my problems and anxieties."

"What does that mean?" Kurt bit out, definitely upset now.

"Well..." Dave began, trying to think of the best way to explain this without completely making Kurt shut down, "Well, we would—I mean, Blaine would—uh, Blaine would be more of a...baby."

"A baby?"

"He would regress. To a much younger Blaine. And I would take care of him."

Kurt looked from one man to another, trying to gauge if they were messing with him. Finally, he just asked, "Are you trying to pull something? What are you talking about? How is this going to help me?"

"It helped me to not feel so stressed. I got to just...relax for a while, not have any responsibilities other than listen to my-" Blaine cut off, not wanting to say the word out loud.

"Your what?" Kurt pressed.

"My...daddy," Blaine whispered, looking everywhere but at the two men sitting in the room with him. His face was red, and he honestly looked like he wanted to cry.

Kurt wasn't sure how to feel about all this. On one hand, ew. Blaine and Dave had been into some weird stuff when they were together, and the memory of the time when he thought he'd lost his best friend was not something he wanted to dwell on. But the look on Blaine's face made him feel just the tiniest bit bad. It was obvious that he really thought this might help them, and his own angry reactions weren't helping anything.

Blaine was expecting a fight. The expressions Kurt was making were making his tummy twist in unpleasant ways with anxiety and fear, and he wanted to just melt into the floor. Kurt was mad, they were going to fight, Dave would leave, and everything would be like it had been: a constant state of unrest. Blaine loved Kurt; he loved him with his whole being. But, he wasn't sure he could take any more of the tension from the stress and little spats they continued to have.

Dave wanted to go home. None of this was how he'd imagined the evening going. The whole room was tense. He could feel Kurt's anger and Blaine's fear while his own anxiety palpitated in his ears. It was obvious that Blaine and Kurt needed help, but he wasn't sure that he could be their help. Everything seemed really intense and awkward, and he almost wished that Blaine had never called him.

One thing that Blaine seemed to frequently forget about his husband, however, was one of the first things he'd ever complimented him on when they first met. "You always zig when I think you're about to zag." And Kurt didn't fail to surprise this time either. "Tell me more," he said quietly.

Both Blaine and Dave gave him a look of shock. "What? What did you say?" Blaine asked.

"I said, 'tell me more.' If this is something you want me to try, I need to know more."

"Are you saying that you want to do it?" Blaine was beside himself. This was not how he'd imagined Kurt reacting, not in a million years.

"Maybe. It sounds weird," he smiled apologetically at his husband, "and I don't really understand it. If you explain it to me, though, maybe."

Blaine couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. "I'll take weird." He turned to fully face Kurt, placing a shaky hand on his knee and leaning in close to his ear. "Does this mean you aren't mad at me?" he whispered. He knew now wasn't really the time for that question, but his anxiety about the whole situation wasn't going to let it rest until he knew.

Kurt kissed his cheek quickly, whispering, "I can't be mad at you for trying to help." He gave Blaine his best smile and squeezed the hand that lay on his knee. Turning his full attention to Dave, he said, "What can you tell me?"

Dave wasn't sure what to do. He hadn't expected Kurt to be so amicable, and this sudden change in emotion was throwing him for a loop. But, judging by the look on Blaine's face, it must be genuine, so Dave decided to plunge in. "Well, I'm not sure what you want to know," he told the man honestly. "When I was with Blaine," he began, not missing the cringe again at the mention. He really wished there was a way not to bring it up, but it had to be said. If he was going to be a part of this, it was something Kurt was going to have to get used to. "When I was with Blaine, he was stressed out all the time. He was working, he wanted to be in school, and honestly, though I didn't realize it at the time, he missed you. The stress would make him angry and irritable, and we were fighting a lot."

"We're going through that right now, actually," Kurt admitted, settling back into the couch and opening his arm in an invitation for Blaine to snuggle in. "Things have been very...tense...around here."

Dave nodded. "So, I was doing some research on relaxation techniques. We tried a lot of things, and none of them seemed to be doing the job. Blaine had too much on his plate." Dave cast a quick glance in Blaine's direction. He was watching him closely, and when he caught his gaze, Blaine gave him a quick smile and nod. "So," he went on, "I looked for other, more unorthodox, answers. I happened to run across an article that someone had written on infantilism, and I-"

"Infantilism?" Kurt questioned.

"Being a baby," Blaine jumped in. "Using diapers and bottles and stuff. I was never a baby. I was older."

"Right," Dave said. "There were things in that article that I liked but not everything, so I kinda discarded the idea. Later, though, I ran across some more articles, this time on age play, and everything seemed to click."

"I didn't want to, at first," Blaine admitted, squirming a bit on the couch so he could make eye contact with Kurt as he spoke. "I told him no. But, Dave was persistent. He'd bring it up whenever I was feeling stressed. He'd ask if I'd like a bath or for me to read to him, and those things sounded really nice."

"So, you did agree?" Kurt asked.

"Eventually. And it turned out to be one of the best things that we did."

"What did you do?" Kurt wanted to know, looking back and forth between the two of them.

"Well, I took care of Blaine. I'd make him dinner, give him a bath, read him a bedtime story, and put him to bed. Sometimes we'd play with toys or games. We didn't do it all the time, but the longer we did it, the more we did it. It was really good for him."

"He called you 'Daddy'?" Kurt questioned. "Were you, like, in charge of him?"

"Sort of. There were rules."

"And consequences," Blaine grimaced.

Kurt raised an eyebrow. "Consequences?'

"Yeah. If I broke the rules."

"And what were those?"

Blaine tensed in Kurt's arms. "Um, time out," he said carefully. "Mouth washing. Spankings."

"Spankings?"

Blaine was too embarrassed to answer, so he said nothing, studying his hands as they twisted in his lap.

Dave took pity on him and responded, "They didn't happen very often. I only did that when he broke a rule we had talked about in the beginning."

"And...you would—you would do that again?" Kurt asked nervously.

"We would talk about it," was all Dave would say.

Kurt wasn't sure what to say. On one hand, he really didn't want to do this. He didn't want anyone else to be involved in his relationship with Blaine, and he especially didn't want anyone to be involved so intimately. Giving Dave power over them would make everything weird. And what would happen if they ever stopped that arrangement? What would happen to their relationship with Dave? Kurt had had a rough enough time with him in high school; he didn't need to make it worse for himself.

Finally, after a few minutes of no talk, Kurt turned to Blaine. He helped to nudge him in to a sitting position, and then grabbed his hands and looked into his eyes. "Is this something that you really want?" he asked.

Blaine wanted to avert his eyes. It wasn't that he didn't want to tell Kurt the honest truth, that yes, he did, indeed, want to do this. It was just that it was hard, and he wanted to hide. Finally, in a voice so soft that he himself could barely hear it, he said, "Yes. I do."

Kurt looked at him for a moment, studying him to see if he was telling the truth. After a few beats, he sighed and turned in Dave's direction. "Okay," he said, looking directly at Dave. "We'll try it."